


Reprise

by miasmatik



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Confessions, Crying, Everything Hurts, Hannibal Loves Will, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Post-Season/Series 03, Will Loves Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 04:45:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10632492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miasmatik/pseuds/miasmatik
Summary: Will hits the water first.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Cautionary Edit: Based on a comment I received about a lack of warning, I'd like to clarify that this can be read as a deathfic.

 

Will hits the water first. 

In a blink he’s alone, at a depth past the moonlight’s reach.

He has the absurd thought that the Hannibal he pulled over the cliff was just another fragment of his splintered psyche, before he exhales and inhales the sea.

 

*

 

Will Graham does not breathe again.

 

*

 

What rises from the water is something worse. 

He knows this because his face has two openings: one spluttering seawater, another welcoming it through severed flaps of flesh. His right arm is numb below the stab wound and the agony of dislocation in his shoulder. His diaphragm struggles to contract under shattered ribs, and at least one of his legs is fractured near the point of immobility. 

He knows that what’s left of him, the thing the tides flay against the rocky shoreline, the thing that claws its way to the surface, scrabbles and crawls through foam and sand, is much worse. 

He knows because the thing he is still drags itself from the waves. It fights for its life, possessed with unthinking self-preservation because, maybe, he is wrong. And Hannibal is not gone. 

He can’t die until he knows if he’ll be going alone.

 

*

 

When he’s far enough onto solid ground that the tides don’t drag him back in, Will collapses. 

His senses return as the adrenaline wears off, the pulse pounding in his ears extending outwards until his whole body is throbbing in an ebb and flow of blinding sharpness. He shudders and twists to stare out at the waves.

He turns to his right, his left, squints up at the shadowed heights of the cliff face. Then he leans over one elbow and coughs up a handful of salt water. He finds his mouth laced with copper, and the next cough stains the sand a dark red.

“H-Hannibal?” he rasps, voice drowned out by the crashing surf. His chest spasms and he chokes, blood dripping from his lips as he struggles to take in air, but Will clears his throat and tries again.

“Hannibal?”

The sea roars back. He waits, but no other answer comes.

Will lifts his head and screams.

 

*

 

He entertains the thought of pulling himself back to the water, but his limbs are heavy and uncooperative. His right arm lies askew beside him, and he can feel now where broken bones set his lower leg and ribs on fire. He’s unsure if the blood that keeps welling in his mouth is from the gash in his cheek or a punctured lung. His clothes are soaked and his skin is clammy and Will knows that if internal bleeding doesn’t kill him first, hypothermia will. 

Somewhere out in the ocean, Hannibal waits.

His eyes burn as he lays his face back onto the sand and measures his breath. He tries to conjure the stream, tries to grasp at some inkling of sanctuary or peace, but the scene is off. The water is flowing too quickly. White-capped rapids where there should be gentle trickles. He wills it to slow but it rises instead, crawls up past his knees. It twists around him and holds him in place. Rises still, until he’s more underwater than above it. 

_This is what you asked for_.

He looks down.

The Will beneath the water wraps a hand around his ankle and tugs. 

He loses his footing, and the last thing he sees before he’s sucked under is the stag watching him from the shore.

He opens his eyes.

The stag is here too. It stands in the distance, half-perched on a shoreline rock. Antlers silhouetted by moonlight, framed by sprays of foam. It staggers once, twice, before limping towards him.

“Will?”

He frowns. 

“Will!” 

That voice.

His head jerks upwards and his pulse quickens. Will blinks moisture out of his eyes, gaze fixed resolutely on where the stag has disappeared. In its place, a man is moving towards him. Limping, then running through the sand. 

_Hannibal_.

His mind blanks and he pushes up. His shoulder buckles at the first sign of pressure, but his forehead rests against the sand for less than a second before he’s rebalancing with his other hand and heaving himself towards the approaching figure. 

Hannibal also stumbles, rights himself, but keeps moving until he’s right there, falling to his knees before Will and drawing him in with a flutter of limbs.

“Will.”

The word sounds like exaltation against his temple, where Will can feel Hannibal’s labored breath across his skin. He collapses into the support of arms wrapped around him. His wounds are screaming, but that’s less important now.

Hannibal is here.

Hannibal is alive.

Will lets himself cry. Lets the sobs wrack his already shivering frame as he fists a hand in the sodden cloth at Hannibal’s back and drags them closer. He’s in so much pain and he’s having trouble getting air, but he knows it’ll be so much worse if Hannibal lets go. He’ll shatter apart.

“Hannibal,” Will rasps, voice hoarse. 

He twists his head to the side to let out a series of coughs. Ignores the fresh bloom of blood on his tongue, buries his head against Hannibal’s shoulder when the older man tries to pry him away. 

“Will. Will, let me see.”

It’s unfair that Hannibal can still sound so composed, so commanding when Will is rapidly losing control of his own responses. He shakes his head against Hannibal’s chest and tries to swallow the evidence, but fingers dig into Will’s left arm and pull him back.

Aside from a fresh gash across his forehead, Hannibal seems whole. Will knows he must be suffering from the gunshot wound, that his limp indicates a sprained or fractured ankle, but against all odds, the older man looks firmly grounded in the world of the living. Will’s not so sure the same can be said of himself: face sliced open and blood dripping down his chin, eyes wet and skin cold and pale, but he tries to smile anyways. 

“I love you,” he says.

Hannibal looks scared.

Maybe he’s not the only one losing control.

 

*

 

Will jolts into consciousness when Hannibal forces his shoulder back into place.

“Will, stay awake.”

They’re still on the beach. The skin of his back feels warm where it’s plastered against Hannibal’s chest. Both of their shirts are gone. Hannibal has torn his button down into strips and is methodically tying them around Will’s shoulder, tightening the fabric over the stab wound and the bruises littering his torso.

“Your body temperature is far too low and you have a mild concussion,” Hannibal explains. Calmly, but Will can’t see his face.

“I suspect a fractured fibula and several cracked ribs. Possible internal organ trauma. Are you having trouble breathing?”

Will is sure Hannibal knows the answer to that. He opens his mouth to respond anyways, but a sudden spasm in his chest has him bending forward and gasping for breath. The movement reignites white hot flashes of agony, and he hisses between shallow inhales as he tries not to panic.

“Will. Will!”

Hannibal curls over him, strong arms barring across his chest. The added pressure actually helps with the pain, to Will’s surprise. He pulls in air and coughs a couple times to clear out his throat. Once the immediate alarm has passed and his breathing has stabilized, he lets Hannibal slowly guide him back to a sitting position.

“Don’t talk.” 

The words sound shakier than before, but Hannibal leans into his hair before he can turn to look. The arms caging his chest tighten. Will places a hand above the one resting against his stomach, over the scar. He feels lightheaded.

“I missed you,” he says. “Every fucking day.”

He’s shaking still, from pain and cold and _relief_ that Hannibal is here. But he’s fairly sure Hannibal is shaking too.

“I missed you so much.”

The older man’s breath hiccups against him. Fingernails dig crescents into his flesh. 

“I am not leaving you again, Will.”

“I don’t think I’m leaving this beach.” 

Hannibal is silent.

“You could,” Will breathes. “You still can.” 

“I’m not going anywhere without you.” 

Will huffs a little, grins despite the nausea creeping in. The blackened waves, the rising river, pulling him back under all the same. 

“I,” he begins, “I’m having trouble breathing.”

His head lolls forward then back, and Will stares up at the sky. If he concentrates on the parts of him fused to Hannibal, he can almost ignore the way his atoms threaten to vibrate apart or how his throat constricts around shallower and shallower breaths.

“Don’t talk, Will. I need you to try and-”

“I meant it.”

“Will-”

“I really do love you, Hannibal. I think I have for a long time.”

Another wet cough, a hand pulling him back down when he chokes. Lips against his ear, his jaw, his throat. Teeth digging in until he has a new focus of pain and stops convulsing against the old ones. 

Hannibal whispers something to him, foreign vowels melding with the sounds of the sea. Poetry in a language he cannot speak. The words wash over him in a soothing tide, their tempo even and sure. Will’s eyelids droop.

“You are everything to me,” Hannibal says.

_This is what you asked for_.

 

*

 

Will opens his eyes. 

Underwater, but not alone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I confess I am enamored with tragic endings for these two. I am also 100% on-board with season four, no dying, and more Murder Husbands. But seriously, could they have picked a steeper cliff to dive off of or?
> 
> And to anyone keeping up with my other stories, The Watcher sequel is in production. ;)


End file.
